TOM LEONARD: Finished? No, Palin is still gunning for power with her 'blood libel' video on the Tucson massacre

The trademark pillar box red jacket had gone for a more sombre grey one; the lipstick was a more muted shade than usual.

Missing, too, was the hectoring tone that we have all come to know.

But there was still the tell-tale Stars and Stripes hanging to one side, as Palinesque as the massive, no-nonsense slate and stone fireplace behind her.

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Sarah Palin posted a video on Facebook slamming the media for 'blood libel'

The wait was over. In an eight-minute long video posted on her
Facebook page, Sarah Palin finally responded to the tragedy in Tucson,
in which a mentally unhinged gunman shot dead six and wounded 14 others
including a Democratic congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords.

That America should be waiting for a comment from a former
vice-presidential contender and reality TV star about a shooting more
than 2,000 miles from her Alaska home says it all about this country’s
fixation with her.

Barricaded in despair and shame inside their modest home, the
distraught parents of Jared Loughner, the alleged gunman, can at least
console themselves that most Americans have been far more interested in
dragging Mrs Palin out of her own media cocoon to see what she had to
say for herself.

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Hours after she broke cover, Barack Obama delivered a powerfully emotive speech in Tucson at a memorial service for the dead.

For many, it was a day in which the two most likely challengers for
the 2012 presidency squared up to each other with their own very
different solutions to America’s problems — the one calling for unity
and civility, the other insisting on the citizens’ right to express
their political views fiercely.

As to who won, the jury is out and — as you’d expect in the U.S. nowadays — bickering wildly.

Sarah Palin's 'target list' of Democrats she wanted to see removed in the November mid-term elections - including Gabrielle Giffords

Anyone who has watched even five minutes of Mrs Palin in action —
whether decrying Washington’s ‘socialism’ from the campaign trail or out
hunting caribou in her reality TV show — would not have been surprised
that she didn’t give an inch to those who claimed her aggressive
political rhetoric (often full of shooting metaphors) might have played a
part in influencing the mentally unhinged Loughner.

Instead, she accused critics of ‘blood libel’ by trying to assign blame to anyone but the killer.

And those two words did what the former Alaskan governor always
manages to do when she opens her mouth nowadays, which is create instant
controversy and instant headlines.

'BLOOD LIBEL': ANCIENT TERM USED BY PAGANS

A blood libel is a false allegation that Jews used the blood of slain Christian children for ritual purposes.

The accusation was originally levelled against both Jews and early Christians by pagans.

The libel was ultimately turned against the Jews by Christians, often at the instigation of the local clergy, with resulting executions, massacres, and expulsions in countless localities throughout Europe over a period of nearly 1,000 years.

The libels and their resultant trials with their legal expenses and fines also led to the financial ruin of numerous Jewish communities.

Among other false charges brought against Jews with similar results were Host desecration and well poisoning.

The term ‘blood libel’ is traditionally applied to the untrue
accusations dating back to medieval times that Jews killed Gentile
babies as part of religious rituals.

Mrs Palin was actually only the second person to use it in connection
with the Tucson row (a conservative commentator in the Wall Street
Journal was the first) but it was the cue for outrage.

Jewish groups and politicians accused her of breathtaking insensitivity, particularly as Mrs Giffords is Jewish.

It was either that or breathtaking ignorance, they said, leaving
unsaid the fact that Mrs Palin has been derided for both failings.

Was it also anti-Semitism, some suggested?

No, said others such as the respected Harvard law professor Alan
Dershowitz (who is also Jewish), Mrs Palin was perfectly entitled to use
the metaphor.

And as with everything about Mrs Palin, it only served to polarise further those who revere her and those who despise her.

Little more than two years have passed since the former beauty queen
and youngest governor in Alaska’s history was plucked from obscurity by a
Republican Party desperate to find a presidential running mate for John
McCain who might match Obama’s populist touch.

It ended disastrously in a string of gaffes, such as her claim that
her foreign policy credentials were strengthened because she could see
Russia from Alaska.

Now 46, she remains a lightning rod for criticism and derision on the
Left just as her libertarian, anti-establishment rhetoric has endeared
her to the Right.

As Todd Harris, a Republican strategist, predicted, the video will
‘be loved by those who love her, hated by those who already hate her’.

Fox News talk-show host Glenn Beck has rubbished the idea that alleged Arizona gunman Jared Loughner was moved to act by either himself or Sarah Palin

The more the establishment attacks her, the more her fans close ranks.
Her critics (and they include more moderate conservatives) are appalled.

For them, it was Mrs Palin at her worst — tactless, self-obsessed and
not bothered about speaking to anyone but her support base.

How like her, they said, to spend so much time defending herself and not mentioning the victims by name.

Likewise, her conservative fans, many of them members of the anti-big
government Tea Party, lapped up her defence in the video of their anger
and their right to express it.

More than 30,000 supporters on Facebook posted messages backing her comments within hours of the video’s release.

Others testing the waters on whether to run for president in 2012
might have chosen more neutral language but not their heroine, the great
Washington outsider who tells it exactly how it is.

‘Nobody understands her base better than she does'

Inevitably, the video is being picked over intently.

Ken Khachigian, a Republican strategist and former speechwriter for
President Reagan, said he was impressed by her ‘more conversational,
more dignified’ bearing, adding that she ‘appeared more grown-up’.

Mr Harris thought her speech was ‘beautifully written and she
delivered with the same star power that she always brings’ but
criticised her failure to try to connect with Americans who aren’t her
­natural supporters.

Erik Smith, a Democratic consultant, was gobsmacked by the video’s political savvy.
‘Nobody understands her base better than she does,’ he said.

Apart from giving occasional interviews to Fox News, the Rupert
Murdoch cable TV station on which she is a highly-paid contributor, Mrs
Palin only talks to the world nowadays through Facebook and Twitter.

Sceptics note — or is that ‘hope’ — that she won’t be able to avoid
the conventional media if she runs for president, but for now, in the
words of Mr Smith, ‘she’s a very savvy practitioner of new media’.

Jim Jordan, a Democratic consultant, says: ‘Every time she pops off,
she excites her narrowing band of partisans and probably makes herself
more money, but she further alienates everyone else.’

Other forensics teams have pored over the video for clues on that popular Washington parlour game — will she run for president?

Some saw it as a sign she is keen to challenge Mr Obama — she did, after all, release it on the day he made his speech.

Supporting evidence includes the fact that she twice referred to America as ‘exceptional’.

Conservatives love to trot this out as they know the public feels the president is bad at acknowledging America’s greatness.

As to what the wider public thinks, polls showed that two-thirds of
Americans did not link Mrs Palin and the Tea Party’s rhetoric to the
Tucson shooting.

Many will probably feel she had a right to defend herself in the video, even if the language might have been better chosen.

And the future?

Mrs Palin’s disregard for conventional wisdom then — as now, over the new video — is so much a part of why her fans love her

The conventional view is that Mrs Palin could easily win the Republican nomination as there are no other strong candidates.

But she would then, so the theory goes, prove a disaster as appalled independent voters would run to support the Democrats.

But to understand the effect she has on rank-and-file Republicans you need to see her in action.

Last October, I followed her to Des Moines where she was addressing a
1,500-strong audience at the Iowa Republican Party’s annual
fund-raising Reagan Dinner.

Her 33-minute speech, entitled Salute To Freedom, was high on emotion
and hyperbole about the need to fight Obama’s ‘socialist’ agenda.

The party bigwigs at the front were clearly none too smitten, but the activists at the back lapped it up.

At the end, declining to take questions and having done the minimum of glad-handing, she left.

The self-­proclaimed small-town ‘hockey mom’ who’s earned an
estimated $15 million from books, TV and speeches since 2008 headed off
to her private jet.

The Iowa caucuses are the first national event in the presidential
nomination process — conventional wisdom is that visiting politicians
have to pull out all the stops to charm the locals.

Mrs Palin’s disregard for conventional wisdom then — as now, over the new video — is so much a part of why her fans love her.

Emily Lofgren, at 19 the youngest ever member of Iowa’s Republican
central committee, admitted she ‘gets a lot of ribbing’ for supporting
Mrs Palin but added: ‘I don’t care what other people think.’

And she’s not the only one.

Inspiring to some, despicable to others, Mrs Palin continues to
plough her own political furrow as she heads towards what many see as a
showdown with her political opposite next year.